Second Year (1949-1950): Toward Economic Growth ... - PDF, 101 mb

Emergence of the Marshall Plan 23
must come as a joint request from a group of friendly nations, not as a series
of isolated and individual appeals.
The need for envisaging a "whole iob"-
This European program must envisage bringing western Europe to a point
where it will be able to maintain a tolerable standard of living on a financially
self-supporting basis. It must give promise of doing the whole job. This
program must give reasonable assurance that if we support it, this will be
the last such program we shall be asked to support in the foreseeable future. s
The desirability of private consultations with the British over the
course to be adopted-
The Planning Staff proposes the despatch of instructions to certain European
missions designed to obtain a uniform digest of the views of the respective
chiefs. It is also proposed that secret discussions with the British be undertaken
at once with respect to the general approach to this problem.
The need to remove two principal misconceptions in respect to the
"Truman Doctrine," these being-
(a) that the United States approach to world problems is a defensive reaction
to communist pressure and that the effort to restore sound economic
conditions in other countries is only a by-product of this reaction and not
something we would be interested in doing if there were no communist
menace;
(b) that the Truman Doctrine is a blank check to give economic and
military aid to any area in the world where the communists show signs of
being successful.
Copies of the memorandum were delivered for review to selected
officials in the State Department, including Dean Acheson, Will Clayton,
Charles E. ("Chip") Bohlen, and Benjamin V. Cohen, after which
members of this group and Kennan met with the Secretary.
·'Mr. Marshall's way of handling that meeting," said Kennan nearly
six years later, "made a great impression on me. After summarizing the
main issues, he went around the table, asking each one in turn to ex-
3 It may be noted that while the Policy Planning Staff rejected the thesis that communism
was the main "root" of Europe's difficulties, emphasizing instead the broad
political, economic, and social maladjustments which made European society vulnerable
to totalitarian exploitation, it attributed those maladjustments principally to the
disruptive and exhausting effects of the war. This conclusion lent support to the idea
that a vigorous but relatively short-term cooperative effort could do the "whole job"
of placing Europe on its feet economically and could be the "last such program" in
the foreseeable future. It will be seen that as the European situation came to be more
fully understood, this premise was increasingly open to question.